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Being the non-techie in the room

4 Comments Posted by on November 1, 2012

When I started at TandemLaunch, I came straight out of university and the closest thing I’ve ever came to an engineer was the plumber at my parent’s house. I had no idea what an FPGA was, never heard about C++ and only had a vague idea how computers work. Applying for a job at a tech start-up seemed kind of ballsy, but that’s how I am.

But I’m realizing more and more that a lot of project managers don’t have a clue what their engineers are doing (or are supposed to be doing.) The number of project managers who have a background in engineering is declining steadily – thanks to specialized degrees in project management and the flood of MBAs who think project management is “no big deal” because they took a class in it.

So how do you deal with this lack of knowledge? How do you get the engineers to respect you, even though they know much more than you about the work? Here are a couple of things that I found useful.

Be honest. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t. People with domain expertise will figure you out in a second. Pretending is never a good idea – and can destroy your credibility when you are called out on it. So just admit you don’t know. This is generally a good piece of advice – if you don’t know something, just admit it. Use your project management skills to gain credibility within your team instead.  Don’t make the fatal mistake of building a project plan in isolation of the project team that will be executing on it. Draw on your team (that’s why they’re there).

Be open. One of the things I love about the engineering team at TandemLaunch is that every single one of them is completely passionate about what they do. They just love their job. And as soon as you show interest in it and ask questions, they will love to teach you. Remember you are a part of a project team: a group of people with different skill sets working together towards a common objective.  Take the time to appreciate their contribution as much as you hope they will appreciate yours.

Learn. This is not just for your job, but for your life in general – why not learn coding? Sure, I’ll never be a software engineer, but at least I am able to understand what the engineers are talking about. The great thing is that there’s tons of free stuff out there. The standard sites are codeacademy, codeschool and udacity. There are also python classes over at kahnacademy. Which one is the best depends on what you want to do with your code. For web, JavaScript, HTML, Ruby and CSS are the ones to choose. For a more “hardware” approach (computing and the like), C/C++, Java and python. You could also look into some scripting language like perl, which is more for text/file processing. For something more UI oriented, C# and VB are the way to go.

Show your value. There are a couple of things that engineers – as a whole- are not really keen on or are not in a position to do. That’s why your role exists! So demonstrate your value here. In general, this seems to boil down to exact specifications. Nothing drives engineers crazier than ever-changing specs.

And if you want to hear this story from the other side, there’s an excellent blog post on the care and feeding of software engineers by Nicholas Zakas.

Entrepreneurship

Working Towards a Project Launch

1 Comment Posted by on August 21, 2012

When Kennedy said “By the end of this decade, we will land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth,” he should be: Concrete.

Goal

He could have said “We should aim to dominate the space race.” But what would that mean? Sending a monkey to space? A human being? An ant colony? For how long? And how far up exactly?

So, which of the two statements remind you more of your project charters? Chances are the latter. People have a tendency to avoid details whenever possible, because it means they just committed to something: “Better keep it light.”

But by “keeping it light” and avoiding details (“I can always fill them in later”) you introduce room for ambiguity. You may know (or think you know) what “space race” (or the equivalent) means. But so will everybody else on your team, and what you will really end up with is 24 different definitions of “space race”.

Kennedy gave a clear definition of WHAT needs to be done (putting a man on the moon and bringing him back – I’m sure the crew of Apollo 11 was especially glad about the second part of the phrase), using unambiguous language: There’s no ambiguity about what “man” or “moon” means.

Imagine one of your employees at a BBQ at a friend’s place (Really. Do it.). When a friend walks up to him and asks, “So, Mario, what are you working on?” What will your employee answer? Does he have an answer? And when Mario answers, will his friend understand what on earth he is talking about? If not, you sucked at giving a concrete project goal. “I am working on the space shuttle toilet that will bring a man safely to the moon and back by the end of this decade” – that’s what your employee should be able to say.

Timeline

JFK also gave a clear WHEN: “By the end of the decade.” Not much time to build a space program, but at least the engineers had a clear goal in mind. Giving your team a very specific, detailed goal is a huge motivator. “Winning the space race” might sound like an Olympic discipline, but you will find plenty of things to distract you from making the 2012 Olympics if you think that being ready for 2016 will do fine.

After the WHAT and WHEN, the last thing to drill down to is the HOW. JFK didn’t say anything about that, so here’s your chance to out-do JFK (and how many chances to be better than Kennedy do you have? Exactly.)

Guidelines

Now we’re getting into project plan territory: translating those terrifyingly concrete objectives into an actionable and achievable plan. Yes a good project plan should specify how many people you need to work on this project, but also if they are senior or junior employees (This will make a lot of difference for what your execution expectations can be). Also, does it provide clear measures of success? What color must your product be? What size? What weight? Add as much details as you can. You can ask early, and come to an agreement on your project’s criteria for success, or you can find out later when you haven’t met people’s expectations. Discussions are not bad. They are a sign that everybody is paying attention.

Beware of project plans that are accepted by everybody without a question. In fact, beware of project plans that were written without asking a million and one questions.  If that groundwork dialogue has not happened, chances are that the people involved have, or will, “customize” the specs to what they THINK, which is, I can guarantee, NOT what was originally in mind.

  • If you describe the WHAT, you give your team members a goal and open a source of motivation.
  • If you tell them WHEN, they know what is expected of them.
  • And by clarifying the HOW, you give yourself some peace of mind, and everyone involved actionable guidance.
  • And always, always, be as concrete and detailed as possible.
People Management , , ,

On Communication, Dentists, and Project Management

2 Comments Posted by on July 24, 2012

Cartoon by Pablo Helguera

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a situation that we all fear and try to avoid as much as possible: I was lying in a chair while a complete stranger poked around in my mouth with instruments that seem to have their origin in a medieval torture chamber (and not having had evolved much since). No matter how much reassurance my mom gave me as a child, I still can’t help but think that visits to the dentist should be reserved for one of Dante’s seven circles of hell. But there I was, so in order to distract myself from the scrapping, poking, drilling, and hissing coming from my general mouth region, I tried to figure out why people hate going to the dentist so much. Surprisingly, my conclusion has a lot to do with one of the most important parts of project management – communication.

I’m sure you have all heard tales of projects drifting off due to miscommunication between the stakeholders involved. Every project manager gets drilled on communication from the very first day on the job. However, there’s a difference between knowing and doing. Some might think that communication isn’t such a big deal – emails are being sent, meetings are held, so, therefore, communication is taking place. But that’s what your dentist thinks too.

In my case, the dentist mumbled something of “root canal” and “don’t worry” and “tell me when it hurts,” and merrily started to drill away. I had no clue what was going on, what the plan was (if there was any), what I should be expecting, and what exactly the problem was that the dentist tried to solve. And the tubes coming out of my mouth, combined with a mechanical device that kept my mouth open, kept me from asking questions – all I could do was raise an eyebrow and wait for the pain.

Chances are high that I am committing the same mistakes as a project manager. As I’m primarily responsible for planning and goal setting, the plan is always crystal clear for me (just as the treatment is clear for the dentist, hopefully…). This does not mean it’s clear for the rest of the team however. As a project manager, it is your duty to make sure that all stakeholders have the information they need to make informed decisions. Here are some tricks that are hopefully helpful:

1. Be open

Don’t assume people ask questions when they have questions. I’m sure you know this phenomenon from your High School days: You had no clue what the teacher was saying, but you didn’t raise the question for fear of being considered stupid. The same happens with your team. Make sure to create an environment of trust where people feel free to ask questions when they have them… and are encouraged to speak even when they don’t.

2. Over communicate

In my experience, people will tell you very fast when they know and understood what you tell them. However, they won’t tell you when they don’t (see above). A very basic tool is to just repeat information in different formats, for example via mail and in a 1:1.

3. Focus communication

Not everyone has to know everything. The sponsor, for example, doesn’t need to know about every single line of code that has been written. Make sure to have a communication plan in place that helps you identify the different levels of information required by and from receivers and givers, and validate that all team members are receiving the information they need in an appropriate way.

4. Get personal

Nothing can beat a personal conversation. Try to talk to your team members face-to-face as often as possible. If your team is spread around the globe, have video conferences (emphasis on video). Miscommunications are often more readily identified and clarified in person.

5. Choose the right channel

Not all tools of communication are interchangeable. Distributing meeting minutes via phone makes as much sense as giving someone a performance review in a public meeting. These examples are exaggerations, but chose communication channels carefully. The “Who? What? Why? What priority?” questions are a great help to define the right way to spread information.

People Management ,

5 Reasons Grey Hair Means Growth

3 Comments Posted by on May 8, 2012

It was a week ago (no, it was longer than that, but for the article’s sake, let’s just pretend it happened a week ago, ok?) that Alessandra discovered a white hair on my head.  Young as I am, the discovery pushed me into an early midlife crisis. What, I asked myself, is this job at TandemLaunch doing to me? I came up with an answer that might be interesting for anyone thinking about joining the highly motivated, rapidly growing startup crowd.

1. Anorexic is the new lean.

Startups never have enough staff. Everyone working at a Startup will agree with me when I say that you’ll always be understaffed and overwhelmed with work. Work hours at a Startup don’t follow the 9 to 5 principle. Most of the time, I work more on a 7 to 7 basis. Plus weekends. And that’s the minimum if you want to make a significant impact on the company.

2. Stay calm and carry on.

Ever since my first day (quite literally), my boss told me that working at a Startup is like riding a roller coaster – the ups will be far higher than in a bigger, established company (ask the folks at Instagramm how they feel right now) but the lows are … low. Add my age and my bipolar personality, and you’ll get highs and lows on a daily basis (sometimes even hourly). Even if one day I love my job and feel like everything is going great, it doesn’t mean that I won’t be completely hopeless the next day. Yes, it is a rollercoaster – with your feelings. Keep this in mind, and just believe that everything will be alright eventually. That’s what brings me through the bad days.

3. You have a career, not a job.

This especially applies if you’re like me and joining a Startup as a way of speeding up your career. You can’t leave your work at work. My work became my life – and I don’t mean this in a negative way. Let me explain. My friends are people I see at work. When I read newspaper articles, I think about how this relates to my work. While my boyfriend plays Xbox, I think about training programs for my employees and how to adjust the budget template for the new cost structure (in case you wondered, he doesn’t mind.) On the weekends, I finish work that I didn’t have time to do during the week. But – and this is the thing – I don’t mind a bit. Because I know that every hour of work I put into TandemLaunch, I will save 5 that it would have taken me to get to this position in a big company. Yes, I work a lot – but that’s because I compress 10 years of career in a normal company into 2.

4. Adapt, adopt, adept.

What I mean by this beautiful headline (sometimes my brain comes up with great stuff, and this is definitively one of them) is that you can’t expect to have the same job in 5 months from now. Hell, you’ll probably have a different role in a month from now. Since I started working at TandemLaunch, I held the following positions (not including minor shifts in responsibilities within these positions): Marketing Analyst / Head of Venture Development (which didn’t even have a name back then) / Project Manager / Manager, Projects. And that’s completely normal if you work in a Startup. If you want to grow, you have to take chances as they pop up – and then grow within that task until it gets too small for you. This might disturb people who are natural risk avoiders – and I’m one of those – but there’s no choice. Of course you can stick to one job, but this limits your growth potential. The accelerated growth of a Startup makes it necessary for employees to adapt to this growth.

5. You’re not alone.

This is important. You are not alone in this. You have a handful of colleagues (maybe not within your startup, but definitely from the startup community) who are in this with you. And they probably feel equally insecure, hopeful, useless and great like you. So throw your hesitations over board and talk to them. Go out, have lunch, and talk. You’ll see – even though they might seem perfectly fine to you, they have the same worries and insecurities as you have. Or, even better, they’ve been through what you’re going through right now, and can give you valuable advice. Working in a startup means that you (hopefully) get to avoid a lot of the big company politics, so who knows, you might even find new friends.

To make it short, it’s exactly like Conan O’Brien says: “Be nice and work hard – and the most incredible things will happen to you.” Believe me – they will.

People Management

Be a Producer, not a Consumer

1 Comment Posted by on March 20, 2012

As a project manager at TandemLaunch Technologies, getting things done is my job. Forget all the fancy things you find in my job description like “establishing, tracking and implementing the budget” or “assure communication between the stake holders” – that’s all just nice marketing talk for GETTING THE JOB DONE. Getting the job done includes everything from “Maria, we need one of the new Kinects they only sell in the US…. Oh, and we need it tomorrow,” to “Maria, Air Canada lost the bag with all the prototypes. My meeting is tomorrow. You have 24 hrs.” (The solution, in case you wondered, is harassing Air Canada, and being insistent about the Frequent Traveller status my boss has until they feel bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. Then ordering the Kinect online and shipping it to the hotel my boss is staying at.)

Yes, I love my job. But sometimes (and I’m sure you know this feeling), focusing is hard. There are the photos my friend put on facebook of her new puppy. There is this interesting article about the financial crisis in Europe on nyt.com. There is the co-worker who asks if you might join her for a coffee at Starbucks. In today’s work environment, the distractions are everywhere. So how do I focus?

I’ve learned a trick that is easy, but surprisingly effective. The next time you have a hard time focusing on what you’re supposed to be doing, and the temptation of sweet uselessness is taking your thoughts prisoner, I want you to recall this simple sentence: I am a producer, not a consumer (Some of you might go “Aww. Incredible!” here, but for everyone else, let me explain).

Being a producer means doing something productive instead of surfing aimlessly on the web. Being a producer means adding value to your job, to your venture, to your study group instead of just riding piggyback on everyone else’s efforts. Being a producer means getting things done, getting them done on time (or even ahead), thinking proactively to make sure that happens, and enjoying the rewards of a job well done.

Being a producer means understanding that the long term reward is worth more than the short term payoff of those puppy photos.  Sure, in the short term you may enjoy some warm and fuzzy feelings, but they will be followed by the sluggish feeling in the pit of your stomach when you leave the office knowing that you didn’t get anything done. Horrible, right? Even though photos of puppies might give you a great feeling, this feeling will not last. And then the subsequent, “Urgh, I need to get the budget done in time for the meeting tomorrow. Shit. I guess I need to work at it from home.”

So the next time you find yourself in an endless Facebook/Reddit/newspaper frenzy, ask yourself this: How does this help me with my career? Does it help me add value to what I’m doing (I’m not talking about adding value to conversations at the water cooler about this women who gave birth to a 7 kg child. Real value)? Because only if you’re creating more value than you are consuming, will you ever be successful.

Think about it.

General

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